Ceferin, Aleksander

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    UEFA’s Ceferin Says He Won’t Seek Another Term as President

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    Aleksander Ceferin prevailed in an effort that would have allowed him another four-year stint as president. Then he announced he wouldn’t seek one.European soccer leaders on Thursday fell squarely in line behind their powerful president, Aleksander Ceferin, by approving a change to term-limit rules that would have allowed him to retain his post through 2031, years beyond the organization’s 12-year term limit.The vote, though, may have been meaningless: About an hour after winning the right to pursue a new four-year term as president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, Mr. Ceferin said he would not seek one.“I’ve decided I am not planning to run in 2027,” a stony-faced Mr. Ceferin said as he read from prepared notes. He said he had made the decision six months ago, after growing tired of dealing with issues such as the effort to suppress a breakaway super league and managing European soccer through the pandemic and wars in Ukraine and Gaza.He said he had not revealed his decision earlier because he wanted to first understand the loyalty of UEFA’s members. In recent months, several members of the governing body’s leadership had objected, publicly and privately, to any weakening of term limits.That had raised the prospect that Thursday’s vote might offer a rebellion. Instead, it brought near-total capitulation: Only one of UEFA’s 55 member federations, England, voted no on the term-limits change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      UEFA Opens a Door to Russia’s Return in Soccer, and Faces a Backlash

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      The angry reactions to a vote by European soccer’s governing body to partly lift its ban on Russian teams could be a preview of fights in other sports.European soccer’s governing body is facing angry criticism and open defiance from some of its member nations after a vote by its executive committee earlier this week partially lifted a blanket ban on Russian teams that was imposed after last year’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.The proposal to allow Russia’s teams to participate in qualifying for the European men’s and women’s under-17 championships that will be held next year, and for which qualifying has already begun, came as a surprise to many members of the governing body, UEFA. Its approval has reopened what many believed was a bitter but settled debate about solidarity with Ukraine.Ukraine’s national soccer federation quickly objected to the vote, arguing that allowing even Russian youth teams to return to tournaments “tolerates Russia’s aggressive policy.” Several federations, including Sweden, Norway and a group of Baltic nations, noted that the conditions that had led to the initial ban remained unchanged, and they invited punishment by saying that they would refuse to play Russian opponents under any circumstances.The tensions in soccer could be a preview of difficult discussions playing out in dozens of sports over the reintegration of Russia and its athletes into global sports ahead of next year’s Paris Olympics. And the angry reaction to the decision highlighted of the difficulty of balancing official solidarity with Ukraine — and opposition to Russian aggression in Ukraine — against the rights of athletes, even youth players, with little say in the actions of their governments.The differences at times appear irreconcilable. A bloc of Western nations, for example, continues to lobby against efforts by the International Olympic Committee to create conditions in which Russian athletes will be allowed to participate in the Paris Games as neutrals. And sports as diverse as tennis and fencing have already seen the effects of the war provoke confrontations and snubs at their competitions.On Friday, Russian athletes received more positive news when the International Paralympic Committee cleared them to compete at the Games that will take place in Paris after next year’s Summer Olympics. The committee voted to allow them to take part as neutrals, without their national emblems or flag.European soccer officials, for their part, were struggling to understand why their organization’s powerful president, Aleksander Ceferin of Slovenia, had chosen to drag their sport back into the dispute. Mr. Ceferin had repeatedly said that the blanket ban on Russian teams would remain in place “until the war ends,” they were quick to note, and the competitive concerns behind the original ban — that the refusal of teams to play Russia made tournament draws unworkable and potentially unfair — had not changed.The stage for the fight was unusual as well. Youth tournaments usually merit little attention at the leadership meetings of European soccer’s governing body, often consigned to cursory updates at the bottom of a long agenda. But this week was different.The closed-door gathering at a hotel in Cyprus was about 90 minutes old when Mr. Ceferin spoke up and put forward a motion. He asked the committee to partially lift a ban on Russian soccer teams that had been imposed after the invasion of Ukraine so that Russia’s junior teams could return to European competition.The president of European soccer’s governing body, Aleksander Ceferin, defended the vote to allow Russian teams to return to continental competitions.Daniel Cole/Associated PressMr. Ceferin left little doubt about his preference. Arguing that it was not right to punish children, he cited his own experience growing up in Slovenia during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and referenced a United Nations charter on the rights of children before allowing others in the room to speak. While most of the officials remained silent — typical in such gatherings, where decisions are usually agreed before a formal vote — Poland’s representative, the former star player Zbigniew Boniek, offered passionate opposition.Mr. Boniek took the floor for about five minutes, pointing out that children in Ukraine, too, continued to suffer because of the war. He said that nothing had changed since the decision to bar Russia was made only days after the start of the war in February 2022.A Romanian official in the room, who did not have a vote, also spoke. He reminded the board that Russia’s war was also affecting children in other European countries. The war, he said, was forcing budget cuts on services in Romania to account for increases in military spending.The representatives from England and Wales joined Boniek in abstaining when the vote was taken, but the motion passed anyway. The repercussions began almost immediately.A handful of European soccer federations immediately said they would not play against Russian teams should they be paired against them in qualification tournaments. Sweden, whose representative at UEFA, Karl-Erik Nilsson, voted for the plan to allow Russian teams to return, went further: It said it would bar Russian players from traveling to next year’s women’s under-17 finals in Sweden should the team qualify.It is unclear what motivated UEFA’s decision to open the door to Russia’s return. Mr. Ceferin’s initiative was not widely shared with officials within the organization before the vote, something that typically happens so the organization can game out the implications of a decision, and the practical consequences are significant: The qualifying draws for both the men’s and women’s under-17 championships were made without Russia, and men’s teams have already begun playing matches. Women’s qualifying begins next week.If the decision is not reversed, UEFA now faces the specter of having to take disciplinary action against countries who refuse to play against Russian opponents. Still, its president was unmoved.Ukrainian boys at a damaged stadium in Irpin. Poland’s representative at the UEFA meeting pointed out that children in Ukraine continued to suffer because of the war.Nicole Tung for The New York Times“By banning children from our competitions, we not only fail to recognize and uphold a fundamental right for their holistic development but we directly discriminate against them,” Mr. Ceferin said in comments published by UEFA after the vote. “By providing opportunities to play and compete with their peers from all over Europe, we are investing in what we hope will be a brighter and more capable future generation and a better tomorrow.”Ukraine’s soccer federation said the return of Russian teams to competitions “in the midst of hostilities conducted by the Russian Federation against Ukraine is groundless and such that it tolerates Russia’s aggressive policy.”Its unequivocal refusal to play Russian opposition was matched by a group of European federations that included the Baltic nations, England, Wales, Norway and Denmark, whose president, like his Swedish counterpart, is a close ally of Mr. Ceferin and did not speak out to oppose Russia’s return during the vote in Cyprus.The ban against Russia’s senior teams will continue until the end of the war, Mr. Ceferin said, reiterating a position he made clear following a charity soccer game in Slovenia earlier this month. At the time, Serbian media quoted the UEFA president as saying “Ask Putin” when he was asked when the ban would be lifted.For now, that question is the least of UEFA’s problems. First it has to hurriedly devise a calendar that will allow Russian teams to enter events that have already begun, keep them away from opponents who are refusing to play them, and do it all even as the list of potential opponents could diminish as more national federations consider whether to heed Ukraine’s call to refuse to play. More

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      FIFA President Gianni Infantino Knows How to Win

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      KIGALI, Rwanda — Presidential politics hardly matter when so many voters want to be Gianni Infantino’s friend.Watch the soccer officials angle for handshakes and face time in stadium suites and marbled lobbies. See the federation presidents pull Infantino aside to thank him for the latest round of funding he has delivered. Glimpse the leaders from smaller soccer nations congratulate him on his successful effort to expand the men’s World Cup, spinning up more opportunity but also ever more money.Infantino, the president of FIFA, soccer’s global governing body, greets them all with a wide smile. In these moments he is in his element, a confident politician nearing a decade in charge of the world’s most popular sport, forever leading it, or lording over it, depending on one’s opinion of him.“Trust me, he truly is a gift to football and humanity,” Amaju Pinnick, a member of the FIFA Council, the organization’s governing board, said after FIFA suggested The New York Times speak with him about Infantino.Slip outside Infantino’s circle of admirers, though, and one gets a different view. Infantino’s loudest critics come mostly from the European leagues, players’ unions and teams that dominate world soccer, and from the continent’s governing body, which has grown to see FIFA as a competitor rather than a partner.They describe a divisive figure driven by ambition whose questionable decisions and quest for legacy have produced frequent conflicts, flawed ideas and unnecessary drama. Their problem is there is little they can do to stop him: Europe’s leagues, players’ unions and teams don’t get a vote in FIFA elections.That is why Infantino’s supporters and his adversaries agree on one thing: He will be re-elected as FIFA’s president at a meeting of the organization’s 211 member nations on Thursday. The outcome, they all know, is a foregone conclusion.Infantino is the only candidate on the ballot.The ReformerGianni Infantino helped rewrite the rules of the job of FIFA president. Then he ran for the job and won. Alexander Hassenstein/FIFA, via Getty ImagesInfantino arrived at FIFA in 2016 as a surprise president. A Swiss lawyer, he had been asked months earlier to join a small group of soccer officials tasked with helping FIFA navigate the biggest crisis in its history.Reeling from a corruption scandal that had brought down most of its leadership, FIFA had convened executives from across the world and given them a mission: produce reforms that would ensure soccer could never again be run according to the whims of a small pool of senior executives with unchecked power.Infantino, a trusted and familiar hand then working at soccer’s European governing body, is remembered for taking an active part in the meetings that produced what was an entirely new governance structure: bold plans that created a more formal divide between FIFA’s elected president and its top administrator, but also new policies on ethics and term limits.When it came time to fill the top job, he then emerged from a pack of contenders as a top candidate to lead the new FIFA. The head of England’s Football Association declared him a “straightforward guy.” More than 100 nations lined up to back him. Outwardly, Infantino appeared humbled by his support.“I want to be the president of all of you,” he told FIFA’s gathered federations. To bolster his credentials as a reformer, Infantino traveled on a budget airline for his first official trip as president. (The private jet travel would soon follow.)But he also rejected FIFA’s first salary offer of $2 million as “insulting,” and used one of his first major hires to appoint Fatma Samoura, a little-known former United Nations official from Senegal, to be FIFA’s secretary general. The appointment of an African woman to a previously all-male, European leadership team made for good optics, and the title made Samoura, in FIFA’s rewritten bylaws at least, the most powerful administrator in the soccer body’s history.FIFA’s rewritten bylaws were designed to grant more power to the secretary general, Fatma Samoura. But rules and reality have not always matched.Getty ImagesThe problem was that Samoura, an experienced diplomat, had little experience in the type of sponsorship and television rights deals her new job would oversee. That hardly mattered, according to multiple insiders: Infantino, they said, saw himself as a supreme leader in all but name, one who could, and would, involve himself in matters large and small. That mind-set was perhaps at its clearest last year: Instead of deputizing Samoura or another deputy to run the final months of preparations for the men’s World Cup in Qatar, Infantino simply moved to Doha, the Qatari capital, and did the job himself.Power and PositionFigures close to Infantino — he rarely gives interviews — said he had little choice but to take the hands-on approach that has defined his leadership.“He inherited a mess because of the actions of the previous administration, and he has led FIFA out of that mess,” said Victor Montagliani, the head of CONCACAF, one of soccer’s six regional confederations. Carlos Cordeiro, the former U.S. Soccer president who is now a senior adviser to Infantino, described him as an “agent of change.”Seven years after he won the presidency, Infantino’s grip on power is clear. He is about to stroll to another term, and his popularity is unquestioned among the only constituency that matters: the leaders of the 211 national federations who hold a vote in FIFA elections.Without an opponent — an increasingly common feature of soccer elections — he most likely will be elected through acclamation on Thursday, with members asked to applaud him rather than vote. Many will do so happily.A broad sense of approval for Infantino’s tenure is — at least publicly — shared widely, particularly among the dozens of small nations that rely on the millions Infantino and FIFA direct back to them to meet their annual budgets.Infantino’s support, though, is hardly unanimous. He has waged bruising public battles with soccer leaders from Europe and South America, in particular, and has shown a tendency to overplay his hand, including on his since-abandoned proposal to stage the World Cup every two years instead of four.Lise Klaveness, the president of Norway’s soccer federation and one of the few women to lead a soccer body, has been one of few national heads to publicly rebuke Infantino’s FIFA — calling out a “culture of fear” that she said prevents critics from speaking out. “The tone at the top is important,” she said in an interview a day before the election.She described letters sent last year by FIFA to federations urging them to endorse Infantino, which she said had a chilling effect on possible opponents, and confirmed that Infantino does not have Norway’s support. “He has had too many missed opportunities to walk the walk and implement the reforms he arrived with,” she said.Another frequent critic is Javier Tebas, the head of Spain’s top men’s league. During a recent visit to London he grumpily derided Infantino’s term in office by listing a number of failed schemes, including a few that have led Infantino into open conflict with Aleksander Ceferin, the head of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body.Infantino and Ceferin have hardly spoken since they first clashed in 2018, when Infantino asked the FIFA Council to grant him the authority to sign a $25 billion contract with an unknown investor — later revealed to be a Japanese fund backed by Gulf interests — to create new tournaments. A complete rupture in the relationship between the two leaders was only averted last year when Infantino backed away from a plan to ask FIFA’s membership to vote to hold the World Cup every two years.Infantino with UEFA’s Aleksander Ceferin. The two men have clashed frequently. Molly Darlington/ReutersPublic objections remain the exception, though, since such disloyalty carries a heavy cost, the leader of one national federation said. There is too much at stake, too much money and too many decisions in soccer that still run through the president’s office, a formidable position that Infantino does not want to vacate anytime soon.A day before the World Cup final in December, Infantino said at a news conference that it had been “clarified” to the FIFA Council that his first term, a period of three years after the disgraced president Sepp Blatter was forced out, did not count toward the 12-year term limit dictated by FIFA’s reforms. That clarification means Infantino could remain president for 15 years, through 2031, a development that one of his most vocal critics said “should ring alarm bells.” (European leaders are less quick to point out that UEFA also quietly changed its own rules to allow Ceferin to extend his term.)“The culture has not changed,” said Miguel Maduro, FIFA’s former governance head under Infantino and a longtime critic of the way soccer is run. “Look at the institution from the outside and what do you see? Voting is almost always unanimous. Incumbents are always re-elected and almost never challenged. Presidents that extend existing term limits.”He added: “All of this, if it were a country, would be clear evidence that there is a severe democratic defect in the electoral system and the organization of the institution.”Global ReachContrary to the spirit, and perhaps even the letter, of the guiding principles he helped draw up seven years ago, Infantino has refashioned himself as a de facto executive president, cultivating a profile that regularly brings him into the orbit of celebrity, power and wealth.He appeared to develop a particularly close relationship with Donald J. Trump, for example, visiting the White House multiple times when he was president. At the 2018 men’s World Cup in Russia, Infantino’s effect on President Vladimir V. Putin was such that the Russian leader later awarded him a state medal.Infantino and the former U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro with Donald J. Trump at the White House in August 2018. All three played key roles in delivering the 2026 tournament to North America. Doug Mills/The New York TimesEven the site of this week’s FIFA Congress feels politically savvy: Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s strongman leader, was given the privilege of hosting the presidential election after having hosted a meeting of the organization’s board in 2019. That loyalty will not go unnoticed on a continent that is home to more than a quarter of FIFA’s 211 presidential voters, each one held by a federation that now receives $8 million across each four-year World Cup cycle.FIFA listed that sevenfold increase in payments to federations first in its response to a request for Infantino to outline his biggest achievements as president.“FIFA under President Infantino stands for due processes, serious and professional approach to things,” a spokesman said on Infantino’s behalf. “Money doesn’t ‘disappear’ anymore.”There is, in fact, more of it than ever: Under Infantino, FIFA persuaded the Department of Justice that it had been a victim of the corruption of its previous leadership. As a reward, FIFA stands to collect a hefty share of a $200 million payout as restitution.Peace and ProtestWith most of his membership fully behind him, Infantino may not have winning critics over high on his agenda in his next term. Still, olive branches are in the air: Before last year’s World Cup, FIFA executives met with UEFA officials to draw up a series of “red lines” that, they hoped, might avert future crises. Infantino and Ceferin were not present at the meetings.Rather than seek a peace with soccer’s traditional powers, Infantino has sought to build new alliances instead, most recently in Gulf States like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Those relationships have helped secure millions in sponsorship income for FIFA, which continues to struggle to attract new partners from Europe or North America, but the secrecy in which the agreements have sometimes been made has been a consistent source of controversy.A satirical carnival float in Germany depicted an opinion of Infantino, and FIFA, that his allies say is outdated.Martin Meissner/Associated PressFriends like the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, have a far higher opinion of his work.Dan Mullan/Getty ImagesMost recently, Australia and New Zealand objected after learning through news media reports that FIFA was poised to sign Saudi Arabia’s tourism agency as a lead sponsor of this year’s Women’s World Cup, which the two nations will co-host. Facing blowback, the deal now appears to be on hold.Infantino’s power and electoral appeal, though, remain undimmed. Few national federations have spoken out against him, and none are publicly opposing his re-election. At least one, though, is weighing a tiny act of rebellion when Infantino stands to accept his new term, its president said.It is considering not applauding. More

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      Liverpool Fans Will Get Refunds for Champions League Final Tickets

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      European soccer’s governing body will return millions of dollars to fans affected by dangerous overcrowding that its own investigation said could have turned deadly.European soccer’s governing body said Tuesday that it would refund the tickets of thousands of Liverpool fans who attended last season’s Champions League final outside Paris, the latest effort by the organization to make amends for policing and security failures that nearly saw its showcase game take a deadly turn.The governing body, UEFA, said it would offer refunds to the fans “most affected” by scenes of dangerous overcrowding outside the gates of the Stade de France last May 28. The affected tickets include the entire ticket allocation provided to Liverpool for sale to its fans — a block of nearly 20,000 tickets — as well as any fans with tickets to specific gates where the worst of the crushes took place.Last year’s final, the showpiece game of the European soccer season, matched two of the most popular and best-supported teams in the game, Liverpool and Real Madrid. But planning failures led to dangerous scenes in which large crowds of Liverpool fans were herded into narrow areas where, with kickoff approaching and fears in the crowds rising, some were sprayed with tear gas by the French riot police.The tickets eligible for refunds, UEFA said, included Liverpool’s entire allotment of 19,618, but potentially hundreds, or even thousands, of others held by fans affected by the problems at the match.A French Senate investigation last year faulted the authorities for the chaos, calling it a “fiasco” and raising concerns about French policing before this year’s Rugby World Cup and next summer’s Paris Olympic Games. An investigation by UEFA, released last month, was even more direct: Its harshly critical report concluded it was only “a matter of chance” that no fans had died. That report laid the principal blame on UEFA.UEFA officials, and French sports officials, have offered previous apologies to Liverpool and its fans for the overcrowding after initially shifting blame for the problems on “late-arriving” fans. (It also first said people who arrived with fake tickets were to blame, though those claims were later debunked by a check of computer ticketing records.) Liverpool and its fans have taken great offense to those comments; at a recent Champions League game against Real Madrid, the teams’ first meeting on the field since last year’s final, Liverpool fans raised banners that were critical of UEFA and denounced France’s sports minister and interior minister as liars.The UEFA statement announcing the ticket refunds, a tangible and multimillion-dollar effort perhaps aimed at defusing some of those hard feelings, was notable in that it included neither a new apology nor any comment from the organization’s president, Aleksander Ceferin. Instead, one of Ceferin’s top deputies thanked Liverpool fans for their input and said the refund plan was an effort “to recognize the negative experiences of those supporters on the day.”It is unclear how many Liverpool fans will accept UEFA’s offer. Hundreds had threatened to sue for compensation last month, and one of the law firms representing a large group of supporters wrote on Twitter that the offer “is welcome but does not go far enough.”UEFA said refunds would be made available to all fans with tickets for six specific gates of the Stade de France, but also to all fans who ticketing controls showed did not enter the stadium before the scheduled 9 p.m. kickoff, and to any others who were not able to — or chose not to — enter the stadium at all. Liverpool has agreed to handle refunds for fans who bought tickets through the club, an accommodation UEFA said was done for privacy reasons. More

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      Champions League Overcrowding Was a ‘Near Miss’ for UEFA

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      Independent investigators concluded it was only a “matter of chance” that the dangerous scenes at last year’s Liverpool-Real Madrid final did not lead to deaths.A monthslong independent investigation into the dangerous overcrowding that jeopardized the safety of thousands of fans at last year’s Champions League final in Paris has placed the blame squarely on European soccer’s governing body, which organized the game. That no lives were lost in the crushes outside the stadium gates, the investigators’ harshly critical report concluded, was only “a matter of chance.”The investigation, which included dozens of interviews and the review of hours of video shot by fans, concluded that senior officials of the governing body, UEFA, made numerous mistakes in preparations for the showcase final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, creating a situation in which planning flaws were neither detected nor quickly addressed, and then tried to shift responsibility onto fans for the congestion that had put their safety — and potentially their lives — at risk.While the report, which runs to more than 200 pages, assigned part of the responsibility for the chaotic scenes outside the Stade de France to various other bodies, including the French police and the French soccer federation, it said the event’s owner, UEFA, “bears primary responsibility for failures which almost led to disaster.”Liverpool fans bore the brunt of the danger as poor organization, in addition to local transport strikes, led to dangerous crushes in which thousands of fans were left penned inside fencing and with nowhere to go. The report said the danger was exacerbated by the indiscriminate and widespread use of tear gas by police officers before the game, the first Champions League final featuring full crowds after two years of pandemic restrictions.And the report left little doubt that the day could have turned deadly, drawing a direct comparison to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in which policing mistakes produced a crush inside an English stadium that eventually led to the deaths of 97 people.“In the judgment of the panel,” the investigators wrote in comparing the two incidents, “the different outcomes were a matter of chance.”Yet, even as the scenes outside the Stade de France were still unfolding, investigators said, efforts were made to blame supporters for the chaos. Aware of the troubling scenes outside, UEFA announced the start of the game would be delayed because of the “late” arrival of supporters. “This claim was objectively untrue,” the report said.Later, French officials, including the interior minister Gérald Darmanin, blamed English fans for what Darmanin said was a “massive, industrial and organized fraud of fake tickets.” The report, commissioned by UEFA, found there was little evidence to back up the claim.UEFA and its most senior officials, notably Martin Kallen, the head of events, were singled out for overall responsibility for what one of the report’s main authors described as a “near miss.”UEFA blamed late-arriving fans when it delayed the kickoff of the final, a claim that the report found was “objectively untrue.”Getty Images“There was contributory fault from other stakeholders, but UEFA were at the wheel,” the report said.The publication of the final report came several months after it was anticipated; UEFA officials had first suggested it would be completed by September. The investigation involved hundreds of interviews and the analysis of footage, including many hours of video shot by supporters caught up in the crushes as they tried to enter the stadium. Dangerous bottlenecks, packed entrances and ramps, and tear gas employed by the police — sometimes sprayed indiscriminately at groups of supporters that included children and disabled fans — added to the chaos.“Unfortunately, the enthusiasm around the game rapidly turned into a real ‘near miss’ which was harmful to a significant number of fans from both clubs,” the report said. “This should never have happened at such an important sporting event, and it is unacceptable that it took place at the heart of the European continent.”The use of the term “near miss,” the panel said, was deliberate and agreed upon by all stakeholders interviewed to mean “an event almost turns into a mass-fatality catastrophe.”The report raised new concerns about security preparations for next year’s Summer Olympics in Paris, with its authors describing events around the Champions League final as a “wake-up call” for Olympic organizers. The panel said evidence collected from Michel Cadot, the French government official responsible for major sporting events, suggested there remained “a misconception about what actually happened and a complacency regarding what needs to change.”An earlier investigation into the Champions League final by two French parliamentary committees had also assigned blame to the authorities, labeling the dangerous overcrowding a “fiasco” caused by a combination of faulty coordination, bad planning and errors by the authorities responsible for organization and safety.The new report offers a fuller view of how the day unfolded, painting a picture of organizational chaos, with decisions taken by individuals without adequate knowledge of what was happening in real time. It said UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, was asked to make a call on delaying the kickoff even though he had not been in the match control room or in contact with security officials; he had been in a meeting with the King of Spain in a V.I.P. area.French policing came under scrutiny after the final. Paris will host next year’s Summer Olympics. Christophe Ena/Associated PressTaken in its totality, the report attempts to show how UEFA delegated or removed itself from any oversight of the security operation at the stadium to such an extent that it “marginalized” its own safety and security unit, headed by Zeljko Pavlica, a confidant of Ceferin’s.Fans arriving at the stadium were greeted by battalions of French riot police, dressed in protective clothing and with supplies that included batons, shields and pepper spray.“The police, unchallenged and accepted without question by other stakeholders, adopted a model aimed at a nonexistent threat from football hooligans,” the panel wrote, adding, “Ultimately the failures of this approach culminated in a policing operation that deployed tear gas and pepper spray: weaponry which has no place at a festival of football.”UEFA had faced criticism about the composition of its panel, with concerns raised about its neutrality after the appointment of a former education and sports minister in Portugal, Tiago Brandão Rodrigues, as chairman. Brandão had previously worked closely with Tiago Craveiro, who was hired last year as a senior adviser to Ceferin.To counter those claims, UEFA added more members to its panel, including its former security head, Kenny Scott, and fan representatives, including Amanda Jacks, an official at the Britain-based Football Supporters Federation. Jacks informed Brandão on Monday that she had accepted an unspecified position at Liverpool and would be starting her new role in March.The report will make uncomfortable reading for UEFA, with some of its top officials now under scrutiny for their actions both on the day and in the planning for the biggest game on the European soccer calendar.“Senior officials at the top of UEFA allowed this to happen, even though the shortcomings of its model were widely known at senior management level,” the report said. More

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      P.S.G. President’s Roles Raise Conflict-of-Interest Concerns

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      When the Paris St.-Germain president avoided punishment in a UEFA investigation, some worried that his power and his friendships were producing special treatment.It had been an electric night of Champions League soccer at Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium, with Real Madrid coming from behind to eliminate Paris St.-Germain. The game in March had been billed as a showdown of soccer’s new money against European aristocracy, and Real Madrid, representing the old guard, had triumphed. But only just.Now that it was over, though, the Paris St.-Germain president, Nasser al-Khelaifi, was furious. And almost as soon as the referee blew his whistle, al-Khelaifi was moving.He and the P.S.G. sporting director, Leonardo, headed straight for the changing rooms used by the referee Danny Makkelie and the match officials. It is not uncommon for members of the losing side to express their frustration over a defeat, or to seek answers. But Makkelie, a highly experienced official from the Netherlands, felt what happened in the tunnel area in Madrid went beyond all acceptable bounds.After the match, Makkelie wrote in a report reviewed by The New York Times, al-Khelaifi and Leonardo “showed aggressive behavior and tried to enter the dressing room of the referee.” Even after Makkelie asked them to leave, he wrote, al-Khelaifi and Leonardo “blocked the door.” The president, he wrote, then “deliberately hit the flag of one of the assistants, breaking it.”The events created a crisis for European soccer’s governing body, UEFA. Al-Khelaifi is one of the most powerful men in the European game, an executive whose multiple roles — including a place on UEFA’s top board and a post as chairman of a media company that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars into European soccer through broadcast deals — have long aroused conflict-of-interest concerns.What happened next has only increased those worries among administrators and rivals. Within 24 hours of the incident, UEFA announced that it had opened a disciplinary investigation. And then it went silent.Weeks passed. Then months. Other incidents that had taken place at UEFA matches held after the game between Real Madrid and P.S.G. were investigated and adjudicated. But UEFA’s investigation into al-Khelaifi — who in addition to his role at P.S.G., one of Europe’s richest clubs, is also the chairman of beIN Media Group, the Qatar-based company that is one of UEFA’s biggest partners — dragged on.Only in June, after the European soccer season had finished, after much of the attention on the incident had faded, did UEFA quietly publish a short paragraph. It appeared on Page 5 of a six-page document listing outcomes of recent disciplinary cases: UEFA said it would ban Leonardo — who had since left P.S.G. — for one game for violating “the basic rules of decent conduct.”Curiously, there was no mention of al-Khelaifi, who according to the referee’s report had engaged in behavior that was worse. UEFA declined to provide details of its investigation, or why al-Khelaifi had avoided punishment. It said the delay could be explained, too: It had simply prioritized investigations involving teams still competing in its competitions. P.S.G. declined to comment.The referee Danny Makkelie with Lionel Messi of P.S.G. during a Champions League game in March. Makkelie accused top P.S.G. officials of aggressive behavior after the match.Javier Soriano/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesVeterans of disciplinary matters inside the organization, though, were not surprised in the outcome. Alex Phillips, a UEFA executive for almost two decades, most recently served as its head of governance and compliance until leaving the organization in 2019. He told The Times that the timing of the resolution alone felt intentional. “They would have waited to find a quiet time to bury it and hope people would have forgotten and it would blow over,” Phillips said.He suggested that UEFA’s disciplinary mechanism has been undermined in recent years. “The so-called independent judicial bodies are in reality far from independent, instead now being used as a power tool to ensure specific outcomes,” Phillips said. “We would tell the public that they are independent decisions when they really are not.”The al-Khelaifi case comes at a particularly sensitive time for UEFA. The European Court of Justice will rule next year after a group of clubs questioned UEFA’s role as a regulator and competition organizer. If it loses, its hegemony over how European soccer’s multibillion-dollar business can be organized, and by whom, may come under severe threat.The case of the tunnel fracas in Madrid is also not the first time P.S.G. has achieved a favorable outcome after being investigated by UEFA. In 2018, the club faced the possibility of being excluded from at least a season of Champions League soccer after being found to have breached UEFA’s financial control regulations. But P.S.G. was spared a humiliating — and expensive — punishment after UEFA’s administration sided with the team against its own investigators.Relations between al-Khelaifi and UEFA have only strengthened since then.He emerged as UEFA’s chief partner in early 2021, when the organization successfully fought off a bid by a group of European soccer’s biggest teams to create a breakaway Super League.But had the Super League succeeded, it would have at a stroke sabotaged the Champions League — UEFA’s chief financial engine and widely considered to be the top club event in global sports.Instead of signing up, though, al-Khelaifi said P.S.G. sided with UEFA, lobbying publicly and privately to help crush the revolt. That effort has been rewarded: Al-Khelaifi was soon elevated to chairman of the influential European Club Association, an umbrella group for more than 200 top clubs that is UEFA’s joint venture partner for selling rights to the Champions League and two other club competitions — and of which beIN Sports is one of the biggest customers.“There’s a clear conflict of interest,” said Miguel Maduro, the former head of governance at global soccer’s governing body, FIFA. “That he’s president of P.S.G. might not be a conflict, because clubs must be represented at UEFA. But the fact UEFA has serious economic interests with him and vice versa gives him undue influence. No one that has economic interests in terms of dealing with UEFA should be on its board.”Phillips, the former UEFA executive, said he had once tried to prevent al-Khelaifi’s elevation to UEFA’s executive committee but found little support among his colleagues.“You’ve got a conflict-of-interest article in the statutes,” Phillips said he told staff members. “You put it in, why don’t you apply it?”UEFA’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, has long brushed aside such concerns, and he even insisted that al-Khelaifi, a Qatari who is a close confidante and occasional tennis partner of the Gulf country’s ruler, remain on its board as he fought a corruption case in Switzerland. (Al-Khelaifi was cleared in the case earlier this year.) This week, as European soccer’s top power brokers meet in Istanbul around the draw for this season’s Champions League, Ceferin and al-Khelaifi, in his role as E.C.A. head, are likely to hold bilateral talks on the future of the game.That influence has not gone unnoticed by rivals already wary of P.S.G.’s deep pockets. Another executive with a team in the Champions League this season, Joan Laporta of Barcelona, lamented in an interview with The New York Times earlier this summer that state-backed clubs like P.S.G. can offer double the amount teams like his can for players in the billion-dollar transfer market.Maduro, meanwhile, said that UEFA’s actions have “created suspicions” that P.S.G. operates under a different set of rules. He described the outcome of the 2018 financial fair play case as “incredible.”“You have the political leadership of UEFA siding with a club against its own independent body, undermining the enforcement of the rules,” he said. Most of the members of the commissions that investigated and ruled on P.S.G. in its financial compliance case have either quit or been replaced.Aleksander Ceferin, the UEFA president, has brushed aside concerns about al-Khelaifi’s multiple roles.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersUEFA has since appointed Sunil Gulati, the former U.S. Soccer president, to lead its financial investigatory body. Gulati and Ceferin developed a friendship when both served on FIFA’s leadership council. It is Gulati who will be the one tasked with implementing the new financial control regulations that UEFA announced earlier this year. But those rules are more flexible than the previous regulations, and they have been renamed to highlight how UEFA is no longer reliant on them to promote a level playing field in its competitions. What had been known as the Financial Fair Play system now will be known as “financial stability” regulations.“Competitiveness cannot be addressed simply by financial regulations,” Andrea Traverso, the UEFA official responsible for establishing the rules, told reporters in April.The rules seem to have arrived at an opportune time for P.S.G., which has carried on spending lavishly even as the rest of the soccer industry was being buffeted by the financial impact of the pandemic. In this summer’s transfer window alone, the club has committed about 200 million euros on players, including a record new contract to retain the star striker Kylian Mbappé.At the same time, news media reports this week said the team was among two dozen that are likely to be fined, or agree to financial settlements with UEFA, for overspending under the new financial rules. Such a punishment is unlikely to hurt a team with the resources of P.S.G. or Manchester City, another club bankrolled by Gulf billions that has repeatedly challenged — and avoided — major sanctions from UEFA.“It seems that there could be some privilege for the clubs,” Laporta said this summer. “The state clubs that are close to UEFA.” More

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      European Super League Fallout, Now in a New York Court

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      A lawsuit filed by an American soccer entrepreneur says the head of European soccer declared “war” on him for working with three top soccer teams.It has been a year since the European Super League was born and collapsed in a two-day soccer supernova of angry statements, legal threats and bad blood. But the project’s repercussions are far from over.In a court filing this week in New York, a prominent American entrepreneur accused the president of European soccer’s governing body of “declaring war” on him to prevent him from organizing a series of exhibition games in North America featuring three teams — Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus — who remain committed to the idea of a breakaway European league.The exchange between the promoter, Charlie Stillitano, and the president, Aleksander Ceferin, emerged as part of Stillitano’s employment dispute with Relevent Sports, an events and marketing company owned by the billionaire Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross.Stillitano had been Relevent’s executive chairman until his departure last spring, when he left the company amid a dispute about a pandemic-related pay cut and a noncompete clause that Relevent had demanded.In his lawsuit, Stillitano and his lawyers offered details of a text message he received in which they said Ceferin warned Stillitano that working with the three teams would effectively render him an opponent of UEFA, the governing body for European soccer that Ceferin leads.The message, Stillitano said, came after he had texted Ceferin telling him that Relevent, which for a decade under Stillitano’s leadership had organized exhibition tournaments and games for top European clubs, had forbade him from working with any of the event company’s former clients. Stillitano asked Ceferin, whose organization is part of a partnership with Relevent, for a meeting, telling him that several teams “including the three that have caused issues with UEFA” had approached him to arrange games.Those teams remain a toxic subject for many European soccer leaders. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus have sued UEFA in Spain over the Super League failure — an action that forced UEFA to suspend disciplinary actions against the teams — and they are also trying to persuade European regulators that UEFA is abusing its monopoly position to block their efforts.For Aleksander Ceferin and UEFA, the Super League fight never fades away.Jean-Christophe Bott/EPA, via ShutterstockThe implications of the court rulings could lead to a significant change in the decades-long organization of soccer in Europe, and to new legal fights: UEFA has insisted it will resume its efforts to punish the clubs once it has the legal right do so.Ceferin reminded Stillitano of that in his reply.“I have heard about your ‘business’ with the three clubs,” Ceferin said in the text message, which was included in Stillitano’s lawsuit. “Those clubs didn’t ‘cause issues with UEFA.’ They tried to destroy UEFA, football and me personally. It’s a shame that you don’t understand it. The fact that you work with them means that me, UEFA or anyone I can have influence on will not have any business or private relation with you until you’re on the other side.”Stillitano’s lawyers described Ceferin’s message as “threatening.”“It became clear that Ceferin and UEFA — and by extension their new partner, Relevent — were declaring war on Stillitano for considering an affiliation with the three teams,” the lawyers wrote.UEFA recently negotiated a contract with Relevent, picking the company as a commercial partner to sell broadcast rights to competitions like the Champions League in North America. The organizations are also discussing the possibility of Relevent’s arranging an off-season competition that would be endorsed by UEFA.In an interview on Friday, Ceferin said he was not interested in whether or not Stillitano worked with the three clubs. But the mere idea that he would, Ceferin said, was enough to end their relationship.“When I realized that he is actually cooperating with them at the same time I decided to finish any relationship with him,” Ceferin said. He was more angered, he said, that a private text message had been disclosed in a public filing. “I never spoke with anyone about this because I have more important things to deal with than dealing with Stillitano,” Ceferin said. “By using the private correspondence publicly, Stillitano showed what his moral values are.”The case is the latest example of ongoing bad blood between UEFA and the three teams, who are among the wealthiest and most powerful in world soccer, and the peripheral damage that the Super League fight continues to cause. It has already destroyed the once-close relationship between Ceferin and the Juventus president Andrea Agnelli; the men have not spoken since last year, even though Ceferin is godfather to Agnelli’s youngest child. Now it is Stillitano who has been cut off.For years, Stillitano moved easily among European soccer’s elite, building Relevent’s soccer business by using connections and friendships to arrange matches for top teams, strike multimillion-dollar deals and rub shoulders with legendary players and coaches. But he has for months been embroiled in a dispute with the company over payments and conditions related to his departure last May.Stillitano contends that Relevent owes him about $1 million in salary and severance payments. Relevent has countered that it ended the payments only after Stillitano breached terms of a noncompete agreement by contacting its clients.According to the lawsuit, Relevent had been paying Stillitano $650,000 a year until the pandemic, when, citing reduced revenues, it moved to reduce his base pay to $200,000. The company said Stillitano agreed to the reduction; Stillitano’s filing contends the pay cut was actually a deferment, and that he would be repaid at a later date.But after Stillitano disputed the deferment, his relationship with the company deteriorated to the point that Relevent terminated his contract in May.Stillitano had little choice but to find new work after that, his lawyers argued. He was “not a wealthy man,” they wrote in the filing, and was therefore required to work. More

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      A Biennial World Cup Is Dead, but FIFA’s Fight Isn’t Over

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      FIFA has quietly given up on a plan to hold the World Cup every two years. But surrender may not mean peace for its president, Gianni Infantino.DOHA, Qatar — Gianni Infantino strode into the bright lights of a packed convention center alongside the emir of Qatar on Friday and declared that he expected this year’s World Cup to be the best ever. It was not an unusual boast; Infantino has made it before, in Russia in 2018, and he will surely make it again when the tournament heads to North America in 2026. But behind his beaming smile, and his bombastic words, the trip to the desert had been the setting for the FIFA president’s latest disappointment.It was here where yet another of Infantino’s hopes for revolutionary change, the kind of bold but ultimately failed plan that has marked his presidency of soccer’s global governing body, finally came to an end. The divisive efforts to double the frequency of the men’s World Cup, to milk FIFA’s multibillion-dollar cash cow every two years instead of every four, are over.While Infantino reminded FIFA’s members, gathered together in person for the first time in three years, that the idea of a biennial World Cup had not been his — a claim that was technically accurate — he had spent a significant amount of financial and political capital to try to engineer what would have amounted to one of the most significant changes in soccer history. Polls were commissioned to showcase support. Experts were enlisted to push back against critics. But the concept’s opponents never wavered: By last fall, European and South American soccer leaders were already threatening a boycott if it came to fruition.In Doha, Infantino finally raised the white flag.The reversal, yet another capitulation on yet another of his grand ideas, followed earlier blunders that have led to damaging rifts with important constituencies. In 2018, Infantino tried to force through a $25 billion deal with the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank to sell some of FIFA’s top assets and create new club and national team competitions, provoking a fight so bitter that he and the leader of European soccer did not speak for a year.In 2019, FIFA used back-channel efforts to try to expand this year’s World Cup to 48 teams from its planned 32. The proposal was abandoned because it would have required the host, Qatar, to share games with its neighbors, including a group that was then engaged in a prolonged economic blockade of the tiny Gulf nation.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.Last week, Infantino, 52, could not quite bring himself to say explicitly that the biennial World Cup, the source of so much acrimony over the past year, was not going to happen. Instead, he allowed only that it was now time to “find agreements and compromises.”Infantino, with the emir of Qatar on Friday, predicted this year’s World Cup would be the best edition of the event ever.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersFIFA, he told delegates, needed new competitions, the kind that would produces the type of revenues needed to fulfill the promises FIFA has made to its 211 member federations. No FIFA president has been generous as Infantino, and for him follow-through is suddenly vital: He announced on Thursday that he would stand for re-election next year.Plans for future events are already taking shape. Annual competitions for boys and girls are planned, with a 48-team youth event for boys and 24-team girls competition unlikely to face any opposition. And opposition to an expanded Club World Cup to be played every four years — another Infantino priority — is now surprisingly muted. A 24-team Club World Cup had been awarded to China for 2021 but was scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic and then sidelined altogether as Infantino focused his energies on the biennial World Cup.Now, with even once-reticent European officials engaging in positive talks, the Club World Cup — potentially expanded even more, to 32 teams — is likely to be agreed upon in the next few months. The new event could begin as soon as 2025. Or it could be delayed until 2027 should FIFA, in the face of resilient European opposition, find an alternative national team competition to the biennial World Cup. Some regional bodies, including Concacaf, the group responsible for soccer in North and Central America, are still pushing for a major new national-team competition.“I think the appetite is there for change, and I think the rest of the world really wants change,” said the Concacaf president, Victor Montagliani.Montagliani suggested a revived and expanded version of the mothballed Confederations Cup, a largely unpopular tournament held in World Cup host countries as a test event, might be an option, as could a global Nations League that could feed into a new quadrennial event for its regional winners — an idea some Europeans ridiculed as a biennial World Cup “by the back door.”At the heart of much of the tension, though, remains a bigger fight: the battle for supremacy between European soccer and FIFA. European officials have been angered by what they perceive as efforts by Infantino, a former UEFA general secretary, to diminish Europe in an effort to bolster his popularity around the world, and signs of their rift were clear in Qatar last week. Several members of UEFA’s delegation, for example, including its president, Aleksander Ceferin, were notable by their absence at Friday’s World Cup draw, an event that took place only a day after they had taken part in the FIFA Congress.Infantino has talked openly about breaking Europe’s stranglehold on success — FIFA last year appeared to encourage efforts to found a breakaway European Super League before walking away from the project as it collapsed — and he retains important allies who share his concerns about its dominance.“What are the rest of us supposed to do? Just twiddle our thumbs and send players and capital over to Europe?” said Montagliani, a Canadian. “That can’t happen. I’m sorry. The reality is, they have as much of a fiduciary duty in terms of the rest of the world, and I think it is time that we all get around the table and figure that out.”The now-doomed biennial World Cup campaign saw Infantino bring other allies into the fight, including leveraging popular former players and coaches to press the issue on his behalf. The efforts were led by Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal coach, who toured the world espousing the benefits of the competition, and members of the FIFA Legends program, a FIFA-funded group of former international stars, who also offered glowing reviews. (Current players were by and large opposed to the idea.)At the same time, opinion polls and surveys and public relations consultants were tasked with changing minds of a skeptical news media and wary fan groups. In the end, though, the effort produced only disruption and discord. And it does not appear to have been cheap: FIFA last week reported a spike in its communications costs in its latest financial disclosure. They rose by almost $10 million — 62 percent — compared with the previous year.Now, as he pushes ahead and makes promises for his re-election, some are waiting for, even expecting, Infantino’s next big idea, one that could deliver cash to his constituents and also the legacy as a change-maker that he craves. More

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      Stranded Soccer Stars, Frantic Calls and a Race to Flee Kyiv

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      “We are here asking for your help,” one Brazilian soccer player pleaded. “There’s no way we can get out.”Inside the windowless conference room of the Kyiv hotel where the soccer stars had gathered, the anxiety was growing by the minute. An aborted attempt to flee had been a disaster. And the sounds of war — mortar fire, rocket blasts, screeching warplanes — provided a near constant reminder of their precarious circumstances.By Saturday morning the group, made up mostly of Brazilians but now swelled by other South Americans and Italians, numbered as many as 70. The players had come to Ukraine to play soccer; weeks earlier, they had taken the field in Champions League, Europe’s richest competition. Now, with their season suspended and Russian forces advancing on the city, they were huddled with their families — wives, partners, young children, aging relatives — and plotting how, and when, to make a run for their lives.“I hope everything will be OK,” one of the stranded Brazilian players, Junior Moraes, said Saturday morning in an interview with The New York Times. Moraes, a forward for the Ukrainian club Shakhtar Donetsk, explained how the group had been hustled to the hotel last week by their team. In the days that followed, as first the country and then the city had come under attack, their ranks expanded after foreign players from a rival club, Dynamo Kyiv, asked to join them.Fearing for their safety and their families’, the players had released a short video that quickly went viral. Food was in short supply, the players said. Necessities like diapers had already run out.“We are here asking for your help,” the Shakhtar player Marlon Santos said, citing the obstacles. “There’s no way we can get out.”Plans to evacuate were hatched and then quickly scrapped. Flights were impossible; Ukraine had shut down civilian aviation, and Russian forces were attacking the airport. Gasoline was in short supply, and a group now numbering in the dozens knew it would be nearly impossible to arrange enough cars, or stay together amid the chaos.Making a run for it carried its own risks, too, since it would have required surrendering their connection with the outside world. The hotel at least had a supply of electricity and, just as crucially, a reliable internet connection, Moraes said.In frantic phone calls, he and others in the group, which included Shakhtar’s coach, Roberto De Zerbi, an Italian, had made contact with consular officials and governments back home. Empathy was abundant. Solutions were not.The players and their families were advised to try to make it to the train station in Kyiv and join the throngs heading west toward Lviv, a city in western Ukraine, closer to the Polish border, that had become a focal point for the exodus from the Russian advance.“In the beginning it seemed like a good idea,” Moraes said of the plan to make a dash for Lviv. “But look, we have babies and old people also here. If you leave the hotel with the internet and electricity keeping us in contact with everybody, and go to another city and stay with kids in the street, how long could we do that before it is very bad?”Shakhtar Donetsk played in the Champions League as recently as December. Now its season has been suspended. Kiko Huesca/EPA, via ShutterstockInstead, the group turned its attention, and its hopes, back to soccer. Shakhtar’s management had arranged for the Brazilians to stay at the hotel as the security situation in Ukraine degenerated. (The team has been based in Kyiv for years, since it was forced to flee Donetsk in 2014 after an earlier Russian-backed assault.) But while team officials assured the group it was working on a solution, none had materialized.The thought of passing another night in the conference room had brought some of those present to the brink of a “psychological collapse,” Moraes said. Several members of the group had tried to make it to safety by fleeing in the early hours of Saturday morning, he said, only to quickly return in a state of shock.“When they went outside there were explosions and they returned screaming in the room,” Moraes said. “It was panic, crazy.”By then the Brazilian players and their families had been joined by a contingent from Argentina and Uruguay. Soon other Brazilians living in Kyiv — but unconnected to soccer — reached out asking for shelter and were welcomed inside.Moraes said De Zerbi, 42, and his assistants had refused to abandon the group. “They had two opportunities to leave us,” Moraes said, “and the coach said, ‘No, I stay here until the end.’”Shortly before his conversation with The Times, though, Moraes had received a phone call. Aleksander Ceferin, the president of European soccer’s governing body, UEFA, was on the line and promising, Moraes said, that “he was pushing to find a solution.”Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A new diplomatic push. More